Using UAS swarms for optimal data acquisition in large spatially distributed areas

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Unmanned aerial systems (UASs), commonly known as drones, are expected to be at the core of the next-generation technology in many different areas such as emergency-response, search and rescue, transportation, unmanned patrolling, agriculture, area survey and inspection, entertainment, and automated mission control. However, the current application of UASs is limited to relatively small scales due to the currently available battery technology and regulatory requirements. For instance, in a topographical survey application, where a large area of several square kilometers needs to be imaged, using a single drone requires multiple battery replacements and massive ground support throughout the field operation. This may expand the entire operation to several days with significant human support, which may not be economically feasible. This economic infeasibility indeed exists for the industrial partner of the project, Sumac Geomatics Inc. This Engage Project will address the above problem by designing a technique that incorporates a swarm of coordinated UASs for optimal data acquisition in large spatially distributed areas. The technique will combine sophisticated offline and online distributed optimization algorithms to find a mission path for each UAS given a set of spatial, energy, and data acquisition constraints. The combination of these paths should result in an overall optimal mission that achieves the operation objectives. We believe this technique will bridge the gap between area constraints of a typical individual UAS scale of operation and the lower limits of economic feasibility for traditional manned aircraft operations. The results of the project will enable Sumac to accept projects that were not economically feasible, thus, significantly widening the scope and diversity of Sumac's clients and operations. In this context, we also envision several future directions of research partnerships in designing swarms of UASs that have online distributed data processing for traffic monitoring, online inspection, and unmanned patrolling.